An automatic image alignment method applied to pressure sensitive paint measurements

Pressure Sensitive Paint technique (PSP) uses images that have to be processed to calculate the pressure field on the model. There are two main issues in image processing. The first one is to recognize the model position in the image and the second one is to use this result to extract the useful information from the image. The presented method deals with these tasks. It requires markers on the model. They are filled circles that are detected with a dedicated function. They have then to be related to model markers. PSP technique provides a lot of images, so software has been written to work in an automatic mode. The camera attitude and location relative to the model are automatically recognized. The full software package enables one to process PSP images without human involvement.